


the night of the living and the dead

by LadyHaleth



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Character Un-death, Gen, Jason Todd Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26930152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHaleth/pseuds/LadyHaleth
Summary: The night that Jason Todd breaks free from his coffin just happens to be the same night that Gotham is suffering from a mild case of zombies.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 11
Kudos: 161
Collections: Batfam Big Bang 2020





	the night of the living and the dead

**Author's Note:**

> here is the first part of the fic i wrote for the [batfam big bang](https://batfam-big-bang.tumblr.com/)! this is the first fic i’ve ever written and i was really nervous but i’ve had an amazing time and i’ve been able to meet so many amazing people as well!!! 
> 
> thank you so much to my incredibly talented artists sadie,([pleasanttimetravelfox](https://pleasanttimetravelfox.tumblr.com/)), belle, ([pikachica](https://pikachica.tumblr.com/)), and micha, ([bullyingbatman](https://bullyingbatman.tumblr.com/)), and my amazing betas eugenia ([stvlti](https://stvlti.tumblr.com/)), millie ([just-a-little-in-over-my-head](https://just-a-little-in-over-my-head.tumblr.com/)), and crys ([crystalinastar](https://crystalinastar.tumblr.com/)) !!!
> 
> i couldn't have done this without you all!

He opens his eyes. It’s dark. Not the kind of dark that comes from closing your eyes, or turning off the lights. An absolute, complete darkness, the kind of darkness that you can almost taste. He has no idea where he is. He could be anywhere, he could be in outer space. His chest burns. You need space suits in space. He doesn’t have a space suit. Astronauts can only survive for 15 seconds outside of their space suit before running out of oxygen--how long has it been since- _oh._

He takes a breath. Then another, and another. It’s still dark. The only sound he can hear is his own heartbeat, the silence ringing in his ears. He doesn’t know where he is _he doesn’t know where he is—_ stop, he tells himself sternly. Panicking isn’t going to help him. He concentrates, tries to think. Something smells bad, like something rotten and he scrunches up his nose in disgust.

As he reaches up to block his nose from the unpleasant scent, his hand hits a barrier inches from his face. His breathing stutters. Searching fingers find an oddly soft yet unmovable surface above him. He pushes against it but it doesn’t budge. His elbows bang against something to the side, his arms unable to fully extend. Frantically squirming, he finds only inches of room between himself and the sides, enclosed completely by satin and wood.

 _He’s trapped._ The realization sends his mind into a tailspin of terror, drowning in the sudden wash of panic and the stench of decay. He claws wildly at the lining, the satin quickly ripping as he tears away strip after strip of fabric. Shoving and scratching at the lid accomplishes little, and his nails bend and break as he scrabbles desperately at the wood above him.

He struggles to breath, gasping for breath, the closed in space rapidly running out of oxygen. In a moment of clarity he gathers himself then slams his knees up into the wood of the lid, over and over until finally he hears a small crack and a light shower of dirt falls on him.

The hint of freedom makes him even more frantic for escape, and he claws at the crack, splinters embedding themselves in his fingers and slicing his hands. He doesn’t even feel the pain, too far gone in blind panic.

He doesn’t know how long it's been but it feels like hours, like years, like centuries, he’s spent buried beneath the earth.

Someone is screaming and it hurts his ears; he wishes it would go away.

The crack widens, splits open, and dirt cascades onto his face, turns to mud in his mouth. The dirt weighs down on his chest like concrete, gets in his nose, in his eyes— he can’t _breathe—_

And he’s drowning in soil, can’t tell which way is up desperate for air but he can’t breathe can’t think can’t scream can only keep digging, heart pumping, lungs straining for oxygen.

At last his hands grasp for dirt and reach air instead, and he hauls himself inch by painful inch out of his grave.

He can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying but there’s tears streaming down his face as he spits out mud, swallowing down gulp after gulp of the fresh night air. His hands are bloody, and he wipes them on the grass. Rolling over onto his back, he stares up at the stars, tiny pinpricks of lights glimmering through Gotham’s murky haze of a night sky. The last time he saw the night sky was—

.

.

.

Jason blinks. Staggering to his feet, he begins to make his way towards the distant lights of the city. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wind tugs at Batman’s cape as he stands on a roof far above the city of Gotham. From this distance, the chaos below is almost imperceivable. If he didn’t know better he would have thought that it was an unusually peaceful night. 

The city of Gotham never sleeps, yet the streets are empty tonight, the cacophony of honking and shouting gone, the cars and taxis that normally stream through the streets locked in garages or parked silently on the side of the road. The bars are empty, all the stores are closed. No citizen of Gotham is outside tonight. There will be no muggings or robberies, no gang activity. 

Yet although the night is quieter than normal, it is far from calm. The overlapping sounds of a multitude of sirens stand out against the absence of the normal noise of the city. The GCPD headquarters beneath his boots is almost entirely emptied of officers, as every possible person available is out on the streets of Gotham, working to contain the chaos. 

“Batman.”

Bruce turns, taking in the commissioner’s disheveled appearance and the bags under his eyes. He looks like he’s aged several years in just the few hours since Bruce last saw him earlier tonight, at the beginning stages of this whole mess.

“Commissioner,” Bruce greets, stepping out from the darkness behind the bat-signal, cape pooling in the shadows. 

Gordon comes up to stand by his side and lights a cigarette. “So, zombies huh.” He huffs a humorless laugh. “I know Gotham is hardly a newcomer to outlandish situations but zombies? Who would have thought?”

Bruce grunts in acknowledgement. He has, of course, made several contingency plans for this possibility several years ago. Still, it isn’t something that even he thought likely to happen. Yet happened it has. Earlier that night, a note appeared on the GBC newscasters' desk threatening ‘the vengeance of the dead’ and the fall of Gotham. It seemed to Bruce like a prank of some sort at first, or at worst, some two-bit sorcerer teaming up with one of the lesser rogues. But less than half an hour later, panicked calls began flooding the emergency lines - panicked calls about zombies and the walking dead.

Whether these ‘zombies’ are simply conjured vessels or... something else… remains to be seen. 

“Damn, I have such a headache.” Gordon rubs at his temples, and Bruce’s own forehead twinges in sympathy. “Thank God people have common sense for once and are staying the hell inside or this would be much worse than it is already.”

The citizens of Gotham, used to frequent disasters, attacks of fear toxin and Joker gas, and other emergencies every few weeks, are not wholly unprepared for a zombie apocalypse. After the news broke and the zombies emerged onto the streets, the people of Gotham were quick to retaliate with baseball bats and anti-Joker protection measures before promptly withdrawing to safety. 

Even so, the amount of undead roaming the streets means it's only a matter of time before they get through doors and walls by sheer numbers alone. While at first there were attempts to take down the zombies, the amount of them made it difficult to do so efficiently. And although taking down one or two zombies is hardly a workout, as slow and awkward as they moved, an officer surrounded by a crowd of these things can be overpowered quickly. 

Bruce tried to help the officers where he could. When he left the team he was with they have just finished barricading a small crowd of the undead into an alley with chain-link fences. Containment, not elimination, proved to be the fastest way to keep Gotham from being overwhelmed. 

“The northern side has mostly been contained, but we’re spread pretty thin.”

“Any casualties?”

“No casualties so far, but several officers have reported mild injuries.”

Bruce looks at Gordon sharply. “Any signs of infection?” 

The saliva sample he extracted and analyzed showed that the chances of being infected by a zombie bite are slim to none, but it is still important to be prepared for all possibilities.

“Not so far, thank God.” Gordon shakes his head. “I don’t even want to imagine the state Gotham would be in if that happened.”

Right now, the situation is just barely manageable, but if the zombies took after the movies...it would be disastrous. 

Flipping tiredly through a file, Gordon sighs. “So far we have absolutely nothing on our suspect—the necromancer or whatever the hell they are. The note is typed and unsigned, and the, uh, method in which it was delivered doesn’t match up with anyone we have on file.”

Bruce nods. The lack of information is not surprising to him, having already attempted and failed to match the suspect to any of the villains currently walking free. Most likely the necromancer is someone new on the scene. “And the analysis of the note?”

He wanted to inspect it himself, but it has already been turned in to the GCPD as evidence and the Commissioner has rejected his request to analyze it himself. There hasn’t been time to argue otherwise. 

“The note came back negative for any fingerprints, but they were able to find traces of soil which they identified as coming from St. Lawrence Cemetery. I’ve already had guys on site to check it out, and there’s no sign of the suspect.” Gordon taps the files against his legs, stalling. 

“It’s... The only thing they were able to find was the... the uh, disturbance of a good number of graves.”

There’s a brief moment of silence, then Bruce says, “So it’s confirmed, then?” 

The fear that he has been desperately trying to ignore in the last few hours is suddenly catapulted to the centre of his thoughts. 

“That the zombies weren’t just summoned out of thin air? Yeah.” Gordon takes a drag of his cigarette, staring out over the city. “The zombies themselves are bad enough but knowing that this guy used our own people? It's sick.”

“Do we have a list of the graveyards that have shown undead activity?”

“Yeah, let me see, St. Lawrence, Cedar Grove, Rose Hills, Greenwood, Trinity Church, St. Peter’s, Gotham Cemetery, and about twenty others, all showing about 10 percent of the graves as, uh, disturbed. Here,” Gordon passes Bruce the slip of paper. Bruce’s fingers close around it unthinkingly, his mind still stuck on Gordon’s words. _Gotham Cemetery._

He should be thinking about the necromancer, about his motivations or possible future actions, but instead he’s thinking about the grave he visits every week, the grave that is located in a cemetery that is now spilling its dead onto the streets. The thought that his son could be one of those things makes him almost nauseous, worry fogging his brain, making it impossible to think about anything else-

Bruce takes a few deep breaths. Ten percent. The odds of Jason's grave being affected are low. He has to focus. 

He realizes he still has Gordon’s list clutched in his hand, the thin paper beginning to wrinkle and tear. Smoothing it out, his eye catches on several of the names. St. Peters’ and Greenwood are located close to Hayworth’s Cemetery, yet it isn’t on the list. Scanning the list again, he can see that Rosewood, on the opposite side of Gotham, is also on the list - but there are at least three more that are a little ways past it that have not made it on the list either. 

He brings up a map of Gotham in his mind, mentally marking off the locations of all the graveyards on the list. They form a rough circle, the graveyards that are affected cutting off at a certain point. 

Bruce might not like magic users but he knows how they work. In order to achieve a spell of this size, the caster would either need to be a magician of tremendous power or would need to use some sort of source or conductor. He pinpoints the center of the section of the city that holds the impacted graveyards. _There._ Right in the center is a portion of the city that is largely populated by smaller processing plants and warehouses, many of them empty. It’s a popular spot for gangs and smuggling rings, but it would also be a prime spot for any magic user wanting to affect as large an area as possible.

Gordon is still talking, discussing the hotspots of zombie activity in the city and turning his back to the wind to light a new cigarette. 

He leaves before Gordon finishes. He already knows what he’s going to say and there are more important things that need to be done. The faster he can find this necromancer and put him away, the faster this night will be over.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jason is cold, and his feet hurt. The cold night wind slices through his tattered clothes and makes his teeth chatter, but his head is hot and his eyes burn. He wishes the chill would relieve the ache of his head, but it doesn’t help and only makes him shiver. He can see his breath turn into fog in the cold air, and something about that strikes him as strange, but he can’t make his brain work long enough to figure out why, and he leaves it be. His scraped up hands throb in time with his heartbeat and he’s so, so tired. Jason has long since forgotten what he was doing or where he was going but he keeps moving, dragging his feet along one step at a time. 

Vaguely aware of other figures moving alongside him, he aimlessly follows them, mind drifting, head full of static. 

He’s cold.

A sudden loud crash and shouting jolts him out of his trance-like state. Jason’s heart is racing, panic worming its way up his spine and freezing the breath in his throat.

There’s a crack followed by a blindingly bright flare of light ahead. He veers to the right, blindly following the figures around him. They’re hemming him in close now, and he shies away, but the noise and light cause him to retreat back into the crowd. His ears are ringing and his eyes are squinched shut. He runs face first into rough brick, immediately crushed by the swell of bodies around him as he realizes that he’s gone as far as he can go. It’s a dead end. He’s trapped. 

Jason fights his way back through the mass of bodies only to find himself face to face with a chain link fence. There are too many bright lights for his eyes to focus, but he can make out blurry shapes moving on the other side of the fence through his teary-eyed vision, shouting and gesturing at one another. 

Hemmed in by walls on either side, a dead end on one end and a fence on the other, he finds himself entirely and completely stuck. There are too many beings pressing against him in every direction for him to go back, nowhere he can go. 

Jason looks up, attention caught by some faint sound, an almost inaudible click of metal on stone or whoosh of fabric in the wind. For just a second, his gaze locks on a dark figure, a shadow swooping high above the ground. 

That’s-

He’s-

There’s a blaring alert going off in his brain. That figure is important to him, somehow, but he can’t think of how or why. He struggles to remember, trying to force his foggy mind to think of something, anything. There are flashes of something, memories? A word floats to the surface, almost-

He’s jostled from behind and loses it. He was-what was he thinking? He doesn’t remember. The wave of bodies is lessening, figures spreading out, It gives Jason room to breathe, room to realize that something isn’t right. These people that he’s trapped in here with, they’re odd. Strange. He can’t put his finger on it, but something about them is just Wrong. They don’t move right, and there’s a smell, like from when he first woke up but it’s worse now, stronger. 

For the first time he looks around, really _really_ looks, and almost screams. A strangled sound escapes his throat before he clamps his hand over his mouth. The figures, these people that he thought they were, they’re rotting, gray. 

They’re dead. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce crouches on the edge of the roof, as still as the gargoyle perched next to him. On the outside he is as still as stone, but on the inside his mind is whirring. Any one of these warehouses would be large enough to contain whatever material component or conduit the necromancer had utilized for the spell, and he doesn’t have time to search them all, not by himself, not without a partner. He remembers a time when the two of them, he and-- but those days are over. He doesn’t have time to dwell on that now. Bruce shifts his weight and shrugs his shoulders, his cape suddenly weighing down on him uncomfortably. The fact that he doesn’t know the necromancer’s motives bothers him. It’s an unknown variable in this equation and he isn’t fond of those. What is his plan? To terrorize the city? Some sort of twisted plan of revenge? The reanimation of dead bodies isn’t a plan someone comes up with on a whim, and something tells Bruce that this necromancer won’t be satisfied to sit back quietly and let the GCPD round up his hard work. No, the sooner Bruce can stop him, the better. 

Bruce takes in the sight below him, mind furiously analyzing. The number of undead in the streets in this area is much higher than in other portions of the city, only furthering his theory that the origin of the hordes must be close by. The area is quiet, except for the grunting and moaning of the undead. His gaze catches on a lurching figure, slight, with dark hair, and for a second his heart stops. 

The next second, his brain catches up to his eyes, and he knows as the figure turns that those feminine features and that unfamiliar face are not that of his son. But the split second of uncertainty shakes Bruce to his core. Without even consciously deciding to, he is examining the rest of the zombies, tracing their decayed features with his eyes, all while desperately hoping _not_ to see Jason among them. He doesn’t know what he would do if he did spot Jason but he needs—he needs to focus, needs to concentrate on his plan. 

Bruce stands, vision whiting out for a moment. He breathes, steadies himself. Deliberately attempting to push aside his relentless worries, in favor of focusing on the case, he scans the buildings below for any hint of where the conduit may be hidden. There. Fresh tire tracks by the entrance of a building. There hasn't been any other traffic in this area since the civilians evacuated. Bruce sets off to follow the trail, and it’s only a moment’s work to swing to the roof of the building in question.

Bruce looks through the skylight to see a man far below, kneeling on the ground of the empty warehouse. He seems to be in his late forties to early fifties, with dark graying hair around a forgettable face, and he looks entirely nondescript in his plain brown suit. The only remarkable detail are the splashes of white paint on the pants, and as Bruce watches, he dips a paintbrush and adds another intricate symbol to the countless others spiraling out and covering the floors, crawling up the walls and around the cement pillars. The necromancer finishes the symbol with a swirl, leaning back and admiring his work with a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. Bruce’s blood boils. To be proud of something like this, the weaponizing and disrespecting of dead loved ones, is abominable. 

There’s no point in being subtle so he tests the strength of the glass with his boot, then slams through the skylight in a shower of glass.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jason tries to back away. They’re getting closer, but there’s no room, and he’s gained their attention now. The horde slowly presses in, lurching steps and snuffling noises. They’re smelling him, he realizes in horror. They seem to be confused for a second, backing off. Jason doesn’t dare move. Then they press forward again, closer and closer until-

Hands grab onto him, clawing at his skin and hair and gaping toothy maws everywhere he looks and he can’t call for help doesn’t know who to call for help and he doesn’t know what to-

Jason snaps into focus. The world sharpens and twists until suddenly things make sense. He knows what to do. His body moves on autopilot, twisting and kicking and moving in ways that feel so, so familiar until finally he breaks free of the horde, scrambling up a bent pipe up to a rusty fire escape and then onto the roof to safety. Panting, he slumps to the ground. 

The adrenaline soaks out of him, leaving him exhausted and drained, yet something is itching at him. He can’t stop thinking of that figure, that person. He’s important somehow, he knows he is. Already it’s become harder to think, the familiar fog creeping back over his mind but Jason remembers which direction the figure went, and he’s not going to be able to rest until he finds out why that person is so important. Jason looks up, out over the roofs of the city. Something stirs in him, calls to him. This, the view of the buildings from high up is familiar, and somehow comforting. He takes a breath, then another, then climbs back onto aching feet. Step by step, he makes his way across the rooftop and further into the night.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce lands inside the warehouse almost soundlessly. The crunch of the glass shards beneath his feet is the only thing giving him away as he approaches the necromancer. The man in question stands up, casually smoothing over the wrinkles on his trousers, as if they were meeting in an office conference room rather than a warehouse he’s just used to raise the dead. 

“Why would you do this?” That isn’t the question he meant to ask first, but the necromancer is already matching it with an answer of his own. 

He chuckles. “Why not?” His smile is pleasant, but his eyes don’t match his face. Bruce doesn’t dignify that with a reply. He’s not here to make conversation, he’s here to do what needs to be done. 

The necromancer straightens his tie and adjusts his jacket. “Listen, as much as I admire your work, Batman, I’ve got places to go, people to see. No offense to you of course, but we’ll have to continue this wonderful talk another time”. Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce catches sight of the knife the man pulled out of his front jacket pocket. Bruce lunges forward and catches his arm, but the necromancer has already sliced the knife across his palm, casting a splatter of blood across the symbols painted on the floor. 

There’s a hushed moment of silence, both men waiting to see what will happen, before the noise of dozens upon dozens of shambling feet makes itself heard, zombie after zombie appearing through the doors and lurching towards them. The necromancer takes advantage of Bruce’s brief moment of distraction and slips away, hurrying through the horde ignored and unscathed as the zombies make a beeline for Bruce. 

As the necromancer vanishes behind the mob, Bruce lets out a breath, his slight frustration countered by a small rush of satisfaction. That one moment of contact had been more than enough to place a tracker on the necromancer. There is nowhere he could go where Batman wouldn’t be able to find him. 

The first zombies reach him before Bruce has the chance to use his grapple gun. Defending himself against the zombies should be easy, but despite his best efforts at focusing on the case, Jason keeps returning to the forefront of his mind. With every member of the undead he takes down, every twist of limb and crack of bone, he pictures Jason, of the possibility of Jason being one of these things, and he falters, his strikes falling short of his usual strength. 

Then Bruce makes the mistake of sweeping his gaze over the remaining zombies. There, at the edge of the mob, among the writhing mass of the undead, is a face. A face that hasn’t faded from Bruce’s memory, a face that he has thought of and missed hundreds of times a day for the last six months. Jason.

Time slows to a crawl.

It’s not as though Bruce has never seen a flash of black hair, or a teenager in a red hoodie grimace in a certain way - every time it has made his heart stop for just a second. But this isn’t some random kid with a similar face, some coincidental spotting or the product of wishful thinking. He knows his son, he knows those eyes, and that face.

This is his son. His dead son. A zombie.

He’s thought about it, of course. As soon as the reports began to come in with people frantically talking about zombies, and even before they knew for sure that the dead were really rising from their graves, he had thought about it. After all, Bruce has lost many people in his life. 

And he thought he was prepared for this. But he was wrong. He was so, so wrong. 

Over the last six months he has thought hundreds of times how he would give anything to see Jason again—but he didn’t mean it like this, this sick caricature of life, having to see his son’s dead eyes and lifeless body lurching around as one of those creatures. That Jason couldn’t even rest in peace—the unfairness of it all hits him like a punch to the stomach. 

The zombies are surrounding him now, clawing at him and pulling him down, but it’s as if his arms are made of lead, his brain of molasses. All he can think about is Jason, standing there so close, yet farther away than ever, and he can’t find the willpower to fight back. Bruce’s eyes are locked onto Jason’s form, and he stares and stares, until the wave of the undead overpowers him, and he loses sight of his son.

There’s a strangled shout, then a tug, as Bruce feels the zombies being pulled off of him. He looks up and straight into the blue eyes of Jason. Eyes that are… fraught with emotion? Before he has time to process any of this, Jason has turned away to deal with the zombies on the other side of him. Bruce’s brain clicks back into gear, finally registering the fight or flight reflex that has been wracking his body for the last ten minutes. It’s automatic, like breathing, as they fight back to back, falling into familiar manoeuvres until the rapidly diminishing crowd of zombies falls back, and gradually drifts off, perhaps looking for less resistant prey. 

Bruce doesn’t even feel the multitude of scratches and bruises he has gained. He stands and stares wonderingly at Jason, who has come to a stop in the middle of the floor, intently watching the last of the zombies leave. 

“Jason-?” Bruce’s voice cracks on the last syllable, but Jason must have heard him loud and clear. He whips his head up to stare back at him. 

This can’t be possible - but Bruce doesn’t care. Zombie or not, Jason saved him. There must be _something_ left of him. Cautiously, he takes a step closer. Jason doesn’t move, just watches him with an unreadable expression on his face. Bruce takes yet another step, then another, until he is finally standing right in front of him. Bruce is staring at Jason as much as Jason is staring at him, and his eyes catch on the trail of blood running down the side of Jason’s face, congealing in his hair. 

The dead can’t bleed. 

Bruce doesn’t examine the logic behind that statement for another moment. If he’s wrong, if this isn’t what it seems like it could almost be, he wouldn’t be able to handle it. Slowly, he reaches out his hand and gently, with the utmost care, moves the strands of hair that are stuck to Jason’s bloodied skin. Jason doesn’t move a muscle, eyes locked with Bruce’s. The blood is wet, smearing on his skin. Barely breathing, Bruce moves his hand down to Jason’s neck, right below his jaw. A pulse beats, fast but strong and steady. A heartbeat. 

“Jay,” he breathes, dangerously on the edge of tears. This is impossible. If this is a dream, he doesn’t ever want to wake up.

Jason blinks, and something clears in his eyes. Tears well up and spill down his cheeks. He opens his mouth, struggling to form words. “Dad,” he croaks out finally. His voice is cracked and barely above a whisper, but it’s the most beautiful thing Bruce has ever heard. 


End file.
